If you do decide you want to try FICSMAS, however,

Know that the entire event is a side gig and not tied to the game's main progression at all, but FICSMAS does come with its own MAM research tree, and this tree is tied to an advent calendar that is located in your hub for the duration of the event.

The calendar and the tree are tied because as we approach the 25th of December, you will be able to unlock doors in the calendar daily, and sometimes receive an item known as a data cartridge.

These cartridges are used to progress further down the MAM tree and unlock new recipes again as we get closer to Christmas.

As you unlock these recipes, you'll notice that nothing FICSMAS related is handcraftable.

And so in the beginning, you will have to collect parts from the presents, the falling presents, and manually feed them to your machines to craft stuff from there.

And as we get closer to Christmas, we will eventually be able to enter holly jolly automatic production with the ultimate goal of FICSMAS being to decorate the great FICSMAS tree.